He looked at the top of the captain’s gleaming bald scalp, wondering which fist could more quickly smash the man’s brown-melon head. “I have a condition, and you know my doctor said—”
“Look, I don’t care about being politically correct or whateva.” The captain glanced up. “All I know is, you’re jacking up my schedule. So, whether or not you’ve completed your anger-management classes, have a group therapy meeting or a fancy note from your female doctor, who you’ve probably slept with to get a hall pass, tonight coverage is mandatory—”
“D said he would work my shift,” Michael argued. He could feel his voice come out close to a snarl, and glimpsed the setting sun.
The captain narrowed his glare. “Derrick Montague would clone himself and work three shifts at the same time if he could. That’s not the point, Mr. Hotshot. Been promoted too many times too early for your own arrogant damned good. There’s already a shortage, and some nutcase is out there butchering women on the stroll in the high-rent district. We need to bring this shit to a conclusion before the media jumps on it and the mayor and city council start bringing additional pressure we don’t need. You’re the best I’ve got for night detail, sad to say, so this is a skills matter. I just don’t want a body filling a suit; I want somebody who can bring this perp in. If you take off tonight, don’t say another word, just hand me your shield.”
Michael felt fury ripple through him. As long as that foul shit was going on in Baltimore, it wasn’t exactly his business. But now something was hunting in his territory? Most times, his own kind would quietly take care of rogues to keep their clans on the DL. Humans were off limits; there was plenty of livestock on the hoof already butchered. This didn’t make no sense.
He leaned down to stare at Captain Thomas, bracing his hands on the desk. “When did the body come in?”
“About an hour ago,” the captain said, shaking his head. “Homicide is on it, but I want someone from vice on this, too. You know the politics.”
“Yeah, I do,” Michael muttered. “You got photos?”
The captain cast a manila folder across the desk and waited while Michael reviewed what was left of the body. From what he could tell, the redheaded female looked to be nineteen or twenty, but something had torn out her throat and opened up her midsection, leaving entrails everywhere, and then ripped flesh from her once-shapely thighs. No, it didn’t make sense, not when there were fully stocked meat-processing plants and butcher shops everywhere these days. Raw beef was available in high supply down on 9th Street at the Italian Market and by the waterfront. Disgusted, Michael closed the folder and shoved it back toward the captain. That was not what the female body was for. Such a waste.
“Did the crazy SOB leave DNA evidence?”
The captain nodded. “All over the place.” He pushed his pudgy frame up from his chair. “Hair, nails. Looked like he practically shaved in bed, and splattered everything in the room like he was pissing a border around it. Left enough sperm all over the bathroom to—”
“Now the shit is personal,” Mike said, beginning to pace back and forth. He was mad enough to howl, but checked himself. “Not in my yard!”
The captain stared at him for a moment. “Glad you’re suddenly feeling better and are ready to sniff out this case.”
“Damn, baby,” Neecy said, panting, and dropped her head forward to rest on the pillows for a moment. Her arms trembled and finally gave out under her, leaving only her behind risen for him. “You gonna kill me if you don’t stop. I thought you weren’t feeling good.”
Michael cocked his head to the side as the dark thought slid through his mind, exited, and the sensation passed. He studied her high, wet ass as he pulled out, holding the rim of the condom. His daddy didn’t raise no fool; it wasn’t about leaving a bunch of pups up and down the eastern seaboard, no matter how good the tail was.
He kissed one of Neecy’s plump butt cheeks, slapped it just for the hell of it as he rolled away and allowed his hand to trail down the slit between them, the scent of raw female sex making him temporarily shut his eyes. “I’m still on duty and gotta get back to work. Whatchu got to eat in here?”
“I can fry you up some chicken, or—”
“Whatchu got already thawed out? I only do chicken as a last resort. You know that.”
“Nothing really,” she admitted, and flopped down on the rumpled sheets. “I didn’t know you’d be stopping by, since you never give me any—”
“Girl, don’t start sweatin’ me about a commitment or my schedule. You know how I roll and what this is. All I asked you was—”
She held up her hand to stop his argument, and sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes at him. “All right. Fine. We can order in, if—”
“I ain’t got time,” he snapped, practically barking at her. He closed his eyes, stood and tried to mellow his next response. It wasn’t her fault, and Neecy had been very, very sweet this afternoon. She was a much better option than the other, high-maintenance women he could have gone to see. Michael took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It ain’t you; it’s the case. Look, don’t get all salty on me, my bad. You got a microwave?”
“Yeah, baby, sure.” Her smile returned, and the hurt look on her face slowly faded.
“You got anything in the freezer worth defrosting?”
She hesitated. “I don’t do a lot of red meat, but might have—”
He held up his hand and found his clothes, too done for words. What was wrong in America? People didn’t do the basic food groups any more! “Next time I fall through, I’ll bring you some real groceries.”
Oh, yeah, it was time to go. Every man knew you didn’t feed ’em if you was gonna leave ’em. The statement was a lapse. He’d almost messed up by promising groceries, and this was not permanent.
“I’m sorry,” she said, gathering up the sheets close to her body. “Baby, if you want a steak, or lamb chops, pork chops . . . sheeit, after what you just laid down, brother, say the word. I ain’t mad at you.” Neecy sighed, and snuggled back against the pillows. “Six-foot-four, two hundred and forty pounds worth of chocolate thunder—hell yeah, I shoulda figured you didn’t do yard bird or bird food.”
“Do I ever?” He chuckled, discarding the used latex in her wastebasket. Now, that was more like it. His way or the highway.
“Half the time, you don’t stay long enough to eat, and never really take me out, so how would I know?” She gave him a sheepish glance that made him smile wider as her eyes trailed down his body and lingered on his exposed, still-hard groin. “But your ass is so fine, I put up with the nonsense. That ain’t right.”
While she spoke the truth and the compliment was nice, her food descriptions had almost made him drool. Tonight a cheese steak wouldn’t cut it; she was beginning to look more delectable than necessary, so he was out. “Next time,” he muttered, knowing there wouldn’t be a next time this month. But the gracious sister had taken the edge off, so he needed to chill.
“You coming back tonight?”
“Yeah, probably,” he lied, then again, maybe. He glanced at her as he pulled on his pants and put on his shoes. Neecy was built for the punishment, even though no human female had ever been able to take his full length. But, as human females went, she did have plenty of nice assets: short corkscrew curls that didn’t get in a man’s way, narrow waist perfect for the grip, thick in the hips, fat thighs that touched when she stood up, an unbelievable ass and small, cone-shaped breasts that perked high, plus the girl sounded like she could cook. “I don’t like my meat overdone, though,” he said, hedging, fighting against the instinct to return to where known primal pleasure resided.
“Okay,” she whispered, drifting off to sleep. “I’ll put a half a side of beef in the fridge if you promise to come back through here like this again later.”
All right, see, now it was on. Everybody with this lupine condition knew that a man’s territory was a man’s territory. You didn’t piss in another man’s yard—it wasn’t done. There were basic rule
s of clan conduct, unless it was time to square off. Mating season wasn’t till the spring, and last he’d checked, there wasn’t an available female with his same problem in the state. So, there was no reason for some stray bastard to cross Pennsylvania lines.
Matter of fact, the few in the region within his pack were all cool and had spread out through Amish country, the Poconos and up near Penn State, where his daddy had been made. He’d won the badlands in Philly fair and square in the last pack standoff. His brothers had all gone down to North Carolina and down toward Florida, and this wasn’t their style anyway. The moon wasn’t up yet, hadn’t crested full, but he was gonna howl at that sucker tonight!
He pulled his Crown Victoria over on 6th and Spring Garden, shut off the engine and locked the car. On foot was the only way to pick up a scent. Technology was simply bullshit that got in the way—but, damn, he was hungry.
Cap said the murder took place in a quiet little bed-and-breakfast in the historic district, around 3rd. Nobody had heard a sound, so this had to have been a lightning-fast, frontal attack while the perp was still in human form. Instinct told him that the rest of the gruesome carnage was from a post-mortem feeding.
The lid was on the case at the moment so the media wouldn’t scare off tourists or cause patron alarm. The department had used the ruse to claim that they needed a few hours of quiet air to track the hot lead to the felon. That wouldn’t last long, though. Money was always the first consideration, so time was of the essence. He knew that was the way things went down in the town, where you had to pay to play. Whatever. All he knew was that he hated the winter, but still loved being outside, especially at night.
Heavy cloud cover shielded the moon as he walked, his black leather bomber taking the brunt of the elements. It was almost dark. He had to resist the urge to rip his jacket, pants and cable-knit sweater off. He was burning up underneath the fabric; it felt like he was wearing two coats, even in the nineteen-degree temp with a wind chill of minus two. His feet demanded freedom from his shoes. He was designed for the raw elements. The call of the wild was in his bones.
Scents slammed into his consciousness as he continued toward 3rd Street, making his nostrils flare, and he inhaled deeply. The overhead fluorescent streetlights sputtered on and shattered his nerves. Artificial light was nothing like the stars and was a distraction. The darker the better. He could see better then. But the urban jungle had been his choice. Hell, he’d been the one to choose the city as his territory. Maybe later he’d just go for broke in Fairmount Park, but for now, he was working and had to remember that. Cap just didn’t understand what this force of nature was like.
As soon as he got to the curb in the Betsy Ross Historic District, he stopped abruptly and stared up at the bed-and-breakfast building. “Oh . . . shit . . .”
Michael tilted his head, closed his eyes and almost howled. He could smell it—everywhere. Didn’t need to go in, didn’t need to pass the crime-scene tape barrier that would be on the fourth-floor hotel-room door. The trail was still hot, and it led down the street to a pub.
He shoved his clenched fists into his pockets and quickened his pace, his attention focused. When he arrived at the tavern steps, the hair on his neck and arms stood up. He pushed through the door with his head and nose held high. His eyesight sharpened, and he almost felt his ears go back against his skull as he entered the dimly lit establishment.
With the grace of a skilled predator, he moved through the after-work crowd, separating out scents, voices from the music, kitchen clatter and general din. He didn’t need the Glock 9, which weighed heavily under his bulging arm in its leather holster. The straps holding the man-made iron weapon constricted his chest, felt like a leash, and he could feel his shoulders thicken, the muscles beneath his skin knitting and churning, as he moved toward the source of the scent.
When he saw her, for a moment, he couldn’t move or speak. She turned around slowly on a bar stool and glanced up at him from her martini, her smoky eyes holding him where he stood.
“Took your ass long enough to track me,” she murmured, and hailed the bartender. “What are you having?”
“You . . . or scotch, whichever comes first.” Damn, she was fine.
She returned a sexy smile without showing any teeth, her lush, red mouth poised over canines that momentarily rose within it and then vanished. It blew him away. He hoped she was alone, or he’d have to fight the sonofabitch that had bedded and fed her in his yard . . . but he could understand how that mighta happened. This woman was definitely worth a body or two.
“Please bring this man a twelve-year-old Dewar’s,” she said to the bartender, appraising Michael thoroughly while she ordered his drink. She then glanced over her shoulder and issued the poor human male on the stool beside her a sultry look. “You won’t mind giving him a seat, will you?”
The businessman stared at her, seeming nearly hypnotized but still conflicted, as though half-indignant and half-ready to oblige her request. But he obviously made his mind up quickly, as he glanced over his shoulder, saw Michael, hesitated for a second, his expression stunned, and slid off his stool.
Michael waited a beat, needing to gather calm before sitting. If the fool challenged him, or accidentally bumped him in passing, in this condition, it was on. Then how would that seem? He glanced around the tavern for evidence of another male of their kind. Seeing none, he temporarily relaxed, lolled his shoulders and approached her.
Finally he sat beside her, picking up the tantalizing scent of her raw animal femaleness, along with blood, flesh and sperm. Now it made perfect sense.
“You turned on him while he was coming and ate the guy, right?” he murmured under his breath.
“Yeah,” she said with a shrug. “He was her john. Wasn’t very good in bed. Didn’t have a lot of respect for women. What can I say?”
“Where’s the body?”
She sipped her martini carefully and chuckled low in her throat. “Wasn’t much left. I was really hungry. Hadn’t eaten since Baltimore.”
“Where’s the body?” Michael repeated low in his throat.
She seemed nonplussed by the threat of his tone, which momentarily disarmed him.
“Oh, okay . . . I dragged it up to the roof and buried it in the tennis-court hedges.” She offered him a sexy smile, allowing the martini to wet her mouth. “Satisfied?”
“We’re not supposed to do humans anymore. Remember the oath? That bull got a lot of us hunted to near extinction. Very uncool.”
“It was my time of the month, and he was into child-porn and all sorts of dirty deeds anyway, sooo . . .”
“You got a man?”
He stared at her. She smiled.
“Are you asking, did a male lup help me do the takedown to feed me this afternoon?”
He smiled and allowed his gaze to eat her up as it traveled across her voluptuous body. “I could understand it, if that’s what went down.”
“I’m an independent woman and do my own takedowns. I’m not currently mated, if that’s what you really want to know.”
He let his breath out hard, accepted his drink and stared down into the short rocks glass. He wasn’t sure if it was relief or sheer awe that had made him sigh. All he knew was that it was getting hard to breathe sitting next to her. But, girlfriend was still way out of order.
“I hear you, baby,” he finally coaxed his voice to say, “but the chick . . . that was really over the top—”
“An accident,” she whispered, gazing up at him with a dazzling, innocent look in her eyes. She placed her hand over his arm and stroked it in a meaningful way, causing him to briefly stare down at it. “She came into the bathroom and got in the way. I was going to pay her and just see her out of the room, first, and then finish eating. But she barged in to do the three-way he’d paid her for, so I had to take her down before she even screamed. You know how humans are; she would have freaked when she saw him dead on the floor. I had to do her. Her scream would have started a wolf hunt. You k
now how things happen in a split second on a hunt. My natural survival instincts kicked in, and before I knew it, her throat was gone.”
She patted his arm and looked up, then covered his hand with her own and squeezed it, her big brown eyes searching his face for understanding. “It was fast and painless. Then I had to make it look like a crazed human male did it to keep the authorities off my trail.” She smiled. “Then, again, I was hoping you’d show up.”
Her smooth, warm hand was melting his, just like her deep brown eyes were liquefying him on the bar stool. “I am a cop, and the authority in this—”
“I know. My bad,” she murmured, cutting him off. “I figured if I marked the perimeter, it might make you investigate. It was his bladder, not mine. Relax. But, listen, can we get out of here?”
What could he say as he stared at her gorgeous, almond-shaped eyes, which were the color of midnight, allowing his gaze to rake her high cheekbones and deep mahogany complexion, which didn’t have a mark on it? He owed Captain Thomas a steak dinner for sure, even though part of him knew he’d been set up by this sister. He knew it like he knew his name; she was hunting him.
He had a decision to make. Her silver fox coat was leisurely draped over her shoulders, and her thick, dark brown, velvety hair nearly fused with it. But the coat couldn’t hide her body. This woman was the definition of “fine.” This was what he’d been talking about. Tall, leggy, doing a little black dress to death, with cleavage to make even a human male howl at the moon.
Oh, yeah. They could definitely get out of there. He tossed down his drink without a word and stood, just so he could see her walk out of the joint in front of him. She picked up her small, black-beaded clutch bag and glimpsed at him as she slid off her stool, uncrossing her long silky legs with purpose. Mesmerizing.
As she strode ahead of him, his imagination didn’t disappoint. This sister was gonna make the hair grow on his knuckles before it was all over. Baby had back . . . shit.
“You wanna go to the park . . . to talk about this in private?” she said in a low rumble that came up from her chest.
Voices From The Other Side Page 15